


Perceptions and Personal Experiences

by Tempasantee



Category: Book of Life (2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:07:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23735116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tempasantee/pseuds/Tempasantee
Summary: Attempting to explain my personal mental state





	Perceptions and Personal Experiences

** Hugging a Cactus or Used to the pain, and ignoring the Feelings **

My childhood was, I believe typical. I had friends, family and fun. I experienced the typical growing pains that all males do. Concerns about being good enough, about not looking stupid to family or friends, and about learning all those secret, adult things that I just knew where hiding just around the next corner. So I was constantly looking, exploring, living and having good and bad times. In addition I loved reading, started at a very early age and so school was easy for me. Although I have never had a great memory I had been able to remember most of the things I needed to. 

I graduated from High School in 1971, had a low draft number and the Vietnam War was still going on so I joined the US Air Force, shortly after which I got married. I was so young and naïve. I had a strong belief in right and wrong, honor, truth and the importance of myself and the military responsibilities I was given. But over time my military experiences - working in the Minuteman Nuclear Weapons system field - changed me. For on a rather routine basis we had to perform duties and specific actions that could have literally results in starting a world-wide nuclear war. Oh, and by the way it would have resulted in our immediate deaths. And each time we did not know until we were completely done with the specific steps if we had or not. Thus more and more those actions started to bother my conscience. It started out with a few sharp mental pains, with ever growing thoughts, concerns, and guilt, and reoccurring nightmares. And seemingly overnight it grew to be massive consistent pain, which grew and grew until it seemed to me to be likened to hugging a very large cactus full of thorns.

Along with the pains and nightmares I no longer felt like I really was part of the human race. It seemed to me I was an outsider, just observing people and their actions. And I found I could not understand a lot of what they were doing, much less have even a clue as to WHY they were doing the things they did, or what I was supposed to do much less how I was supposed to intereact with everyone else in the world. And as time went on I felt more and more like there was a tranparent, but very thick solid but tranparent wall between me and everyone else. And oddly enough I forgot how to laugh or cry. Since then I have taught myself how to laugh, but I still do not know how to cry.

As I said, at first my conscience and guilt were an all-consuming, constant excruciating pain, a pain that was seemingly without end. I liken it to hugging a cactus. Each thought was a needle, a needle that hurt so much going in, and there were literally millions of those thought needles, constantly pushing in, and twisting, and sinking in deeper and deeper, and hurting more and more. The guilt for what I had done, the constant overlapping images of what I could have caused, the inability to stop thinking about it all was horrendous. 

For security reasons we were not allowed to discuss what we did, but I lived and live in constant fear that my family, friends, and honestly everyone else in the world would learn about my actions and truly hate me. And I deserved all of it, and more. And I hugged that cactus, tighter and tighter and I felt each thought needle sink in, lay after layer, deeper and deeper they sank in.

However, over time, because I had to, I found that I was able to compartmentalize the pain, and bury my conscious awareness of it in order to take care of whatever had to be taken care of, for life went on. The constant guilt was and is still there, the constant thoughts and images were still there with all the pain, the reoccurring nightmares were and are still there, but I went on, and still do to this day.

And life goes on. Not easily, for from the first I have had to stop at various points and decide if I wanted to continue living. Each time, so far, I have decided that I do want to live. But it has been close some times. And still at various points I have stopped and had to reexamine my decision, and decide if I wanted to continue to live, continue to go on. 

I was young and innocent when I enlisted. I saw myself as a good person, an honest and caring person, willingly helping others anyway I could. I was a small-town hick and proud of it. I married shortly after enlisting and shortly had a baby and wife to take care of.

I had to take care of my kids and my wife. Furthermore, while it was and is impossible, I had to somehow try to make amends for what I had done, and what I had been willing and able to do. 

But by following orders, by being willing and able to actually turn the switches, push the buttons, perform my duties when those duties involved creating nuclear war if and when required, I had proven to myself that I was not the person I had thought I was. I was not the kind of person I could be proud to be.

And the guilt, the images, and the pain continued. And I hugged that cactus. I had and have nightmares on a regular basis (one or two a week), but that is just how it is. I had and have random panic attacks. I had and have constant concern for my safety. And on a good night I get 5 hours sleep. I do not enjoy pain, I do not enjoy suffering, but I deserve it all so I hug that cactus even tighter. And I have become used to the pain and all the baggage I have created. 

Over time I have pushed everyone near to me away. I no longer have a wife, or friends of any kind (close or even work friends). Looking back, I can see that at some point I became numb to life, work, family, and really everything. I did not notice just when it started but I was cutting off pieces of everything I cared about and was a bit amazed that there are no feelings, just walled off pain that broke through now and then. Even now I can look back and I can see the pieces being sliced off. Each piece falling in slow motion away from me, making myself smaller, harder, seemingly safer but definitely more alone.

At the time I wrote this, I was 67 years old. I have continued to live this nightmare for more than 40 years, and have become used to hugging that cactus. It was and is something I was comfortable with, and it allowed me to avoid thinking overmuch about just what I had done, and what I have become. It cost me my family, my friends, and my enjoyment of life, but I have been able to survive. Then, for the past couple of years things started changing. I started experiencing incidents of significant memory problems, and cognitive disconnects. So, I sought medical help, which led me to mental help, which led me to counseling.

Sounds easy when I write it here, but it was and is not in any way, shape or form easy or less painful. But I knew and still know I HAVE to change. So, I am working on it. So here I am, slowly pulling the needle thoughts out, one by one, examining them, and trying to learn to get past them. And for each one examined, a dozen or more new ones poke themselves in – but I keep trying. 

So far, the pain, the rate of reevaluations of living or not, the panic attacks, the fears, the memory problems, and the nightmares have increased and I have yet to see any end to it. The pain and fears are all out in front again, fresh, strong and unforgiving. But I still hold out hope that it will get better.

So far, so good.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I worked in the Minuteman Nuclear Weapons field for several years. That warped me is strange ways. This is my attempt to explain just how and to share the state of mind I have lived with for the past 40+ years since that time.


End file.
